Lolita

Amazon.com

Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake

Book Description

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Customer Reviews:

A great book, but not exactly pleasant reading.......2007-09-08

I've read "Lolita" twice now, and it's very difficult for me to explain how I feel about this book. On one hand, I think it's brilliant. Vladimir Nabokov's amazing prose makes "Lolita" one of the most celebrated 20th century novels ever written. It's clever and shocking and absolute genius. However, the story also revolves around a pedophile/murderer, Humbert Humbert. In the first few pages of the book, we learn that Humbert is writing "Lolita" as a confession while he rots away in a jail cell. Humbert has always had an obsession with "nymphets," which is his affectionate term for sexually desirable girls ranging from nine to 14 years of age. He ends up marrying a woman just because he's hung up on her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (a.k.a. "Lolita"). Humbert and Lolita eventually begin an affair, and Humbert's overwhelming desire for her ultimately leads him to commit murder.

Being the phenomenal writer that he is, Nabokov makes the child molester Humbert appear charming and almost sympathetic to the reader. This man is a completely wretched human being, but due to the author's exquisite manipulation of language, we're forced to view Humbert in a very different light. I think "Lolita" is a fantastic story, but the whole pedophilia aspect has always soured my experience of reading this book. I can appreciate "Lolita" for its innovation and brilliance, but it's just not the kind of story I genuinely enjoy reading.

Lolita.......2007-09-05

One of the best books I have read, by one of the best writers ever. Many are drawn to this book because of its forbidden and erotic nature. But once you begin reading it you become trapped in Nabokov's tale of love and obsession and can't let go. It is a literary masterpiece. Reading Lolita is something beyond being witness to what happens in the story as an outsider. The reader is eventually a part of the tale and it becomes a test of one's own morality.

Erotic and erudite.......2007-09-03

Of course many will find this book to be offensive, as middle-aged European Humbert Humbert, now in America, concocts a plan to seduce and entrap 12 ½ year old Lolita, the daughter of his landlord. For others, while the subject of pedophilia is undoubtedly troubling, what is most noticeable is the incredible depth and smartness of the writing - almost spellbinding.

There are very few sexually explicit descriptions to be found in the book. Far more time is devoted to the mental state of Humbert and his justifications, delusions, and stratagems in taking up with Lolita on a year-long cross-country journey. It is hardly the author's purpose to directly condemn Humbert's actions, instead, he steadily shows that obsession with a nymphet can have no other than an ignominious end.

There is no shortage of observations concerning the uniformity and ordinariness of American life in the 1950s, not to mention subtle commentary on attraction, desirability, and morality. The story line of the book is more than a bit farfetched, yet the book is incredibly erotic and intriguing.

A case study of a pedophile.......2007-07-21

I have read many reviews (not all 442) but no one seems to be picking up on something very important to this tale. Humbert was an unreliable narrator. It isn't that he was deliberately dishonest, rather, these were the thoughts a man trying rationalize his horrible choices and borderline delusional thought processes. His "explanation" of why he desired young females, using his memories of Annabel, were thinly constructed ways of vindicate himself to his readers and himself. Oh, of course! Isn't everything in life a result of childhood trauma? Doesn't that make it ok?
Delusional thoughts? A magazine ad posted on Lolita's wall contained a handsome man who, of course, looked as handsome as Humbert. That must mean she wanted him. A young girl sharing her sexual experiences at summer camp must be telling him because she desires him in the same way. In other words, Humbert is just an every day, ordinary pedophile who wants to see himself as a romantic hero, instead of a rapist
What has rankled me about some reviews is their vision of Dolores Haze. She has been described as manipulative, a willing participant in Humbert's folly, that she was the one pulling the strings. This is what her captor wants us to think in order to feel better about what he has done to her. Every now and then, it seeps into his narrative and his consciousness, that he has done something horrific to someone who was truly innocent. People have remarked that her willing acceptance of gifts in exchange for sexual favors must mean that she enjoyed the experience in some way.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Dolores was an orphan, she had no other visible family members or anyone else she could rely upon. Additionally, she had a captor who let her know, very forcefully, that he was all she had in the world, that she would end up in a horrible foster home if she didn't stick with him. What, exactly, would these readers expect a 12 year old, one who had just lost her mother, expect her to do? What she did was manage her situation the best she could. Her life in captivity was made bearable by magazines, socks, eating at the restaurant of her choice, a tiny amount of personal power in an almost powerless situation. Humbert also gets to feel better about himself, that he is treating her like a princess despite the fact that he is raping her on a regular basis. In the end, Lolita behaves just like any victim of sexual abuse. Her choice of friends is less than savory, worse than her captor and she is, for the most part, damaged beyond repair.
Nabokov is masterful because he has taken something truly ugly and horrible and made it feel compelling and authentic yet beautiful. There were points where I felt dirty and voyeuristic while reading of their trip across America. As characteristic of the poet, Nabokov vividly describes every emotion, obsession, sunset, frustration, landscape, hotel or anything else is such aching detail that it is easy to forget that Humbert is a common pedophile. The duel between his impulses and his conscience are amazingly heartfelt. I can imagine that Nabokov read many case studies of pedophiles and their behavior before synthesizing this into his poetic masterpiece.

I'll hear Irons in my sleep for some time to come.......2007-06-12

I first discovered that the well known name and label Lolita was not what I had thought while reading comments and watching interviews about my favorite Lolita (though that label really does not fit), Alizée.
I borrowed this audio version from the library and am quite glad that I did. Jeremy Irons gave a spectacular performance in reading the novel to me. His voice will forever color the way I see Humbert Humbert. I may have to go back and read it again some day, probably with an annotated version to get all those various references and especially the French phrases, but I just don't know if I could bear to go through all that again. Though, I'll definitely watch the newer movie with Irons as Humbert.
Yes, this is one of those books that is difficult to tell most people that I even read. Trying to describe it is likely to cause misunderstanding. As people have said throughout the decades, it is the witty quality of writing that makes the book so great and the expression of the incredible obsession of love and lust that consumed our protagonist. In the first half I would say that the story line was not really even that interesting compared to the more typical fantasy stories. It was really just so much of ordinary life, albeit not typical. By the end, I realized that was one of the things that is so incredible about the story. It's so real. By the end of the book, I have been convinced that to really have given it a chance, one must read it to the very last word (or listen to Jeremy narrate it in this case). This was some real 'quality' writing. It does beg the question, how does one come up with this stuff? This book will leave you thinking, for sure.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Average customer rating:

Life and Literature in Iran
Rambling and boring
Informative, unique perspective, a bit disjointed
A View Of Iran
An ugly, irresponsible excuse for a book

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 081297106X
Release Date: 2003-12-30

Amazon.com

An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen

Book Description

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

Customer Reviews:

Life and Literature in Iran.......2007-09-30

For two years, Azar Nafisi, an Iranian professor, gathered a group of young women into her home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. This circular memoir begins by talking about these weekly meetings, then takes the reader into poignant fragments about Nafisi's life in Iran and how things became the way they are. Throughout the book, learning and discussion occurs through novels such as Lolita and Pride and Prejudice.

I found the middle sections a little monotonous. The first and fourth sections were my favorites, because they focused on the girls' group that Professor Nafisi led. I would recommend this book if you love literature and writing and English... or if you want to learn more about the nuances of Islamic life in Iran.

Rambling and boring.......2007-09-21

First, I must confess: I didn't finish the book. It contains a lot of disjointed literary criticism in additon to descriptions of the lives of the author and her women students in 1990's Iran. I found it boring.

Informative, unique perspective, a bit disjointed.......2007-08-29

Everyone I knew said this was an amazing book, so I was a bit disappointed when I first started reading it. Unlike some of the reviewers, I thought the book became significantly more interesting once it was out of the "book club" mode. I have never read "Lolita" and a number of the reference were lost on me. In fact, our book group changed the book (which we've done twice in nearly 10 years) mid-stream and picked something else after a number of people had the same response that I did initially.

FORTUNATELY, I kept reading. I've always wondered how religious zealots come into absolute power (at least in the US, we vote them in). This book illustrated how slowly a change can take place and before you know it, you're covered in a traditional garb. At one point, she discusses how the silly little rule changes, which door to use, etc, didn't bother her because she was too busy worrying about her syllabus, which she felt was more important.

This book was insightful, similar to "The Kite Runner", regarding how most families in the world share the same values, but how easily a vocal minority can come into power when people are too busy to care about politics.

This book also throws aside the western view that Muslim women are meek, mild and without opinion.

I enjoyed it, although I felt like the middle should have been the beginning.

It is a worthy read that stays with you.

A View Of Iran.......2007-08-20

I don't know much about Iran, though I know a lot about it's neighboring countries. This was a new adventure for me, and one I am glad I undertook. Azar Nafisi certainly wrote a compelling account of her life in Tehran, under the constant watch of revolutionary Islamists, that are rivalled only by hard-core communists and the Taliban regime. Nafisi allows us to look at Iran in its transformation from a cosmopolitan Asian country to a backwards fundamentalist dictatorship. Nafisi introduces us to the victims of this transformation - from people to culture to history.

I thoroughly enjoyed Nafisi's book for the most part. I gave the book four stars only due to Nafisi's repeated analyses of the works of Nabokov, James and Fitzgerald. Nafisi's first book was about Nabokov's literature, and I found it unnecessary for her to fall back on Lolita and Daisy Miller so heavily. At first, in fact, the novel doesn't seem to be about anything BUT Nabokov, and Iranian women's perception of Nabokov's "Lolita."

Only later is it that Nafisi concentrates on the story that she set out to tell - the story of a few Iranian women thirsting for literature and knowledge being stifled by the new ultra-Islamic regime. As the story unfolds, we see Iranian freedom slowly disappear into a distant memory as seen by progressive college students and professors of tehran's University, at first through clear eyes, later through the heavy veil imposed by the regime on all women.

I find Nafisi's account of her life in this crucial historic stage of Tehran a fascinating memoir, a memoir that touches on so many things: friendship, learning, loss, longing. It is a memoir in which eating a forbidden ham and cheese sandwich becomes a treasured memory, a memory that brings our everyday life into perspective. Above all, I see Nafisi's memoir as the novel of hope and of future shaped by our past, with no regrets. I highly recommend this novel to all aspiring novelists, as well as all who have no knowledge of modern Iran.

An ugly, irresponsible excuse for a book.......2007-08-19

This is the worst book I've ever read.

To start with, Azar Nafisi is a terrible writer. This is not in itself a dealbreaker; plenty of writers with zero talent for constructing beautiful sentences have stolidly crafted enjoyable bestsellers out of workmanlike prose that never ventures outside a comfort zone of basic, straightforward presentation of information. Nafisi's mistake is in thinking she has that talent for words, that she is the greatest writer on earth, when in fact she does not and is not.

For about a quarter of the book I honestly believed that the bad writing must be some sort of obscure postmodern statement, the meaning of which I had not yet grasped, so I continued to wade through it in search of an explanation. I wanted to believe it was self-aware. But soon it became apparent that she really was writing in this absurd, all-over-the-map manner in earnest, attempting spectacular feat after spectacular feat of time- and tense-shifting that failed just as spectacularly, not to mention her tendency to leave out quotation marks in dialogue whenever the fancy struck her, all of it rendering the book a rambling, incoherent muck of pretension. She also attempts to pump every chapter full of ornate descriptions of everything and anything regardless of its value to the story. A prudent editor could have cut "Reading Lolita in Tehran" down to half of its endless 343 pages without losing anything of worth. Unfortunately this would have made the book only marginally better, for there are greater problems than just the prose.

She is also ignorant and hypocritical to the extreme. She frequently refers to a cherished metaphor comparing Iran's relationship toward its women with Humbert's relationship toward the title character in "Lolita." Ignoring the ludicrous way she mangles the metaphor to meet various situations like a child using power tools to fit a square peg into a round hole, it brings to light the fundamental failure of this book: it does not even attempt to bring any insight to the situation it presumes to examine.

Just as Iran suppresses its women's individuality for its own ends, she writes, Humbert forces Lolita into being his fantasy, never letting her escape his all-controlling narrative to become her own person. This injustice is one of the main themes of the book. And yet whenever one of the "bad guys" of the book comes into the picture, it becomes apparent who is casting whom in only one light. The soulless Iranian pig-men are never allowed to "say" things, they may only say them "sulkily," or "drone on triumphantly." Nafisi never even attempts to give anyone who disagrees with her vision of utopia more than one dimension, condemning them as blindly as the censor she so loathes, and portraying them as red-faced babies screaming at the angelic, perfect, wonderful, articulate, elegant, soft-spoken and yet still tenacious and ever so brave girls of her class, so that the troubled reader will never have to make a single decision for himself: she has already done all that troublesome judgment for him. She is just another of "Those who see the world in black and white, drunk on the righteousness of their own fictions" (132).

Nabokov gave even Humbert a reason for his evil, if a tenuous one: his lost childhood love Annabelle. What is radical Islam's Annabelle? Don't look for real answers here. Nafisi offers only appetizing answers, ones that go down smoothly to give readers a sense of solidarity against a faceless enemy. Here the opposition is portrayed as nothing more than a parade of inhuman oppressing machines. Such demonizing tactics have been used before, throughout history. I'll leave it to the reader to find specific examples.

Azar Nafisi rightly deplores the injustices of the Iranian empire, but I shudder to think of what would go on in the kind of country run according to the oversimplified, irresponsible, hypocritical thinking she demonstrates here. Compared to that, Iran looks like Disneyland.

I hope she learns how to write and how to think before she attempts another book.

Average customer rating:

Essential Reading
If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov...
Lo. Li. Ta.
Astounding Command of the English Language
The Ultimate Narcissist

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140264078

Customer Reviews:

Essential Reading.......2007-05-06

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Nabokov writes great prose, and actually twists your mind into thinking what Humbert is doing is not really all that wrong. It makes you sick, but you start to feel for Humbert. It's a fantastic read, even if you think you already know the story, or if you've seen one of the movies. This is am amazing book, one that I would recommend to everyone.

If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov..........2007-03-19

As I grow old and older, I ask myself all too often why I bother? Haven't I eaten enough toast? Haven't I bent over to tie enough shoes? Then I come across an author like Vladimir Nabokov and a book like *Lolita,* an author and a book that, although Ive read thousands and thousands of books in my time, I somehow never read before. Maybe it was his name, or fame, or the fact that a movie was made of his most famous novel. There are books that you feel you've already read, even though you havent, just because they are so famous, or infamous. This is one of those books. But if you havent read it and think you know what its all about, youre wrong, utterly and 100% wrong, and youre missing one of the great joys of a reader's life: the prose of Vladimir Nabokov.

This book is fiendishly good. It undermines everything we "ought" to feel, then it makes us feel it; finally it pulls the rug out from under us altogether. Nabokov's narrator, Humbert Humbert, is a child molestor, that's what we'd call him in the bald and unfancy terminology of today. He's a sick, abusive, predatory[...]. Yet it's his voice that entertains us throughout *Lolita,* and entertains us it does. Humbert is urbane, intelligent, self-deprecating, cynical, and laugh-out-loud funny. He's a poet and a romantic. He's the English professor we all wish we had. He knows that what he's doing is wrong. He's the first to admit it. He's the first to admit everything, including that he can't help himself. He is, you see, in love, hopelessly and authentically and obsessively in love. The problem is that she's [....]
Now the truly devilish thing about *Lolita* is that of all the characters in the novel, including even Lolita herself, its Humbert that draws our "sympathy," so to speak. Sympathy for the devil, it is, in spite of ourselves, in the sense that we see the world most vividly from his point-of-view, in the sense that he seems more alive than anyone else in the novel, more perceptive, more uncompromisingly self-honest, more human and, in the end, the most tragic of all the characters. He's a man with an indelible flaw, he's a man in love, no matter how misguided, no matter how criminal, and its Nabokov's "evil" genius to get us to accept Humbert Humbert as our sick hero, man who we might send to prison for fifty years, but who we couldn't help feeling more than a twinge of regret having to do so.

One would be hard-pressed to come up with a prose-stylist whose voice is smoother, more casually erudite, and more post-contemporary than Nabokov...and this in a novel that is already half-a-century old! An amazing text from an author who has after 300 pages of pure reading bliss, shot instantaneously to the top of my favorite author's list, *Lolita* is a book I should have read a hundred years ago, but instead sat wasting my time in graduate literature courses! What are they teaching in schools anyway? I'm ordering up some more Nabokov novels immediately, if not sooner. You should too.

Lo. Li. Ta........2007-03-17

Nabokov's Lolita is simply an incredible book.

Humbert Humbert is infatuated with 'nymphets', oddly beautiful girls aged 9-14. Upon arriving in the United States, he lodges with Charlotte Haze; he takes the lodging after spotting Charlotte's nymphet daughter Delores (Lolita). In order to stay close to Delores he weds Charlotte, who is in love with him. Due to tragic circumstances sometime later, Humbert claims Delores and the duo embark on an extensive road trip across the states.

The voice of humbert is so intriguing - Nabokov has created a narrator that is depraved, yet intelligent and somehow sympathetic. His depravity and awful behavior is often forgotten or ignored because of Humbert's incredible wit, charm, taste and physical beauty; Humbert Humbert is successful in gaining sympathy and amity for his narrative is magnificent and loaded with intellectual and cultural references that are often both smart and humorous.

Due to Nabokov's eloquent, intelligent and much layered prose, Lolita is one of the greatest, most tragic yet strangest love stories of all time. A beautiful book.

Astounding Command of the English Language.......2007-03-14

This is an amazing book. As I read it, I realized how powerful language can be, because Nabokov bedazzles you with his story. You feel yourself going along with his main character's opinions/justifications as he ingratiates himself in Delores' mother's life, seduces Delores.... even when you know that what he's doing is wrong/illegal/unethical.

Most people can't write this well in their FIRST language. From what I understand, English is Nabakov's third!

Be prepared to be disturbed by this story, even as you wonder at how well it's told. After reading, I started to understand how people can be led astray by charletons.

The Ultimate Narcissist.......2006-12-01

Narkissos saw his image reflected on the surface of a pond, fell madly in love with what he saw, dived into the pond to consummate the apparition and promptly turned into a flower (i.e., the narcissus). This is why we say the narcissistic personality is in love with himself. And in real life, he operates that way. Come on now. You know what we are talking about. We all know a smarty pants when we see one.
The narcissist is never wrong. He is so spoiled, he expects to be given whatever he wants no matter what it means to others. He can be demanding and indignant if he is not treated the way he thinks he deserves. He is arrogant, haughty, snobbish, and downright bitchy. Even when he knows he is being outrageously pretentious, grandiose and entitled, he expects admiration, attention, recognition and VIP treatment. That's just the way he is. But under all that puffery, he is a vulnerable child. His self-esteem is extremely fragile. Despite his fantasies, (Yes, dear reader, fantasy. Or, do you also believe Nabokov wrote Annabelle Lee and not Poe?), he actually does know that he is an overbearing little twit. Indeed, he has become an expert at practicing "extreme twitness" so as to test those around him. But, here's the rub. Just because he's a twit, does that also make him a pedophile? I don't think so.

The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

Average customer rating:

Adds a new dimension to a novel I admired already
If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov
Good story, bad annotaions
Annotations Not Within Text
Important Note about the Annotated Version

The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
Vladimir Nabokov , and Alfred Appel Jr.
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679727299
Release Date: 1991-04-23

Amazon.com

In 1954 Vladimir Nabokov asked one American publisher to consider "a firebomb that I have just finished putting together." The explosive device: Lolita, his morality play about a middle-aged European's obsession with a 12-year-old American girl. Two years later, the New York Times called it "great art." Other reviewers staked a higher moral ground (the editor of the London Sunday Express declaring it "the filthiest book I've ever read"). Since then, the sinuous novel has never ceased to astound. Even Nabokov was astonished by its place in the popular imagination. One biographer writes that "he was quite shocked when a little girl of eight or nine came to his door for candy on Halloween, dressed up by her parents as Lolita." And when it came time to casting the film, Nabokov declared, "Let them find a dwarfess!"

The character Lolita's power now exists almost separately from the endlessly inventive novel. If only it were read as often as it is alluded to. Alfred Appel Jr., editor of the annotated edition, has appended some 900 notes, an exhaustive, good-humored introduction, and a recent preface in which he admits that the "reader familiar with Lolita can approach the apparatus as a separate unit, but the perspicacious student who keeps turning back and forth from text to Notes risks vertigo." No matter. The notes range from translations to the anatomical to the complex textual. Appel is also happy to point out the Great Punster's supposedly unintended word play: he defends the phrase "Beaver Eaters" as "a portmanteau of 'Beefeaters' (the yeoman of the British royal guard) and their beaver hats."

Book Description

The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.

Customer Reviews:

Adds a new dimension to a novel I admired already.......2007-05-07

It's hard to imagine a better qualified person to annotate Nabokov's Lolita.
Appel has an extensive knowledge of Nabokov's life and work. He met Nabokov, on several occasions, and used those opportunities to find out information that only the author could know.

Appel uses this knowledge to add new, profound and, sometimes just simply amusing insights into a novel that I always admired but also felt frustrated by the mystery shrouding it. To be sure, even after reading Appel's Annotated Lolita enough mystery still remains to keep me intrigued and also to renew my appreciation for Nabokov's amazing mind.

The Annotated Lolita contains a lengthy introduction by Appel that covers other Nabokov's works, his life and his philosophy. The, sometimes dense, annotations are scattered through the text very unobtrusively so that it is quite possible to read the novel with or without Appel's help.

If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov.......2007-03-19

As I grow old and older, I ask myself all too often why I bother? Haven't I eaten enough toast? Haven't I bent over to tie enough shoes? Then I come across an author like Vladimir Nabokov and a book like *Lolita,* an author and a book that, although Ive read thousands and thousands of books in my time, I somehow never read before. Maybe it was his name, or fame, or the fact that a movie was made of his most famous novel. There are books that you feel you've already read, even though you havent, just because they are so famous, or infamous. This is one of those books. But if you havent read it and think you know what its all about, youre wrong, utterly and 100% wrong, and youre missing one of the great joys of a reader's life: the prose of Vladimir Nabokov.

This book is fiendishly good. It undermines everything we "ought" to feel, then it makes us feel it; finally it pulls the rug out from under us altogether. Nabokov's narrator, Humbert Humbert, is a child molestor, that's what we'd call him in the bald and unfancy terminology of today. He's a sick, abusive, predatory pervert. Yet it's his voice that entertains us throughout *Lolita,* and entertains us it does. Humbert is urbane, intelligent, self-deprecating, cynical, and laugh-out-loud funny. He's a poet and a romantic. He's the English professor we all wish we had. He knows that what he's doing is wrong. He's the first to admit it. He's the first to admit everything, including that he can't help himself. He is, you see, in love, hopelessly and authentically and obsessively in love. The problem is that she's twelve years old.

Now the truly devilish thing about *Lolita* is that of all the characters in the novel, including even Lolita herself, its Humbert that draws our "sympathy," so to speak. Sympathy for the devil, it is, in spite of ourselves, in the sense that we see the world most vividly from his point-of-view, in the sense that he seems more alive than anyone else in the novel, more perceptive, more uncompromisingly self-honest, more human and, in the end, the most tragic of all the characters. He's a man with an indelible flaw, he's a man in love, no matter how misguided, no matter how criminal, and its Nabokov's "evil" genius to get us to accept Humbert Humbert as our sick hero, man who we might send to prison for fifty years, but who we couldn't help feeling more than a twinge of regret having to do so.

One would be hard-pressed to come up with a prose-stylist whose voice is smoother, more casually erudite, and more post-contemporary than Nabokov...and this in a novel that is already half-a-century old! An amazing text from an author who has after 300 pages of pure reading bliss, shot instantaneously to the top of my favorite author's list, *Lolita* is a book I should have read a hundred years ago, but instead sat wasting my time in graduate literature courses! What are they teaching in schools anyway? I'm ordering up some more Nabokov novels immediately, if not sooner. You should too.

Good story, bad annotaions.......2007-03-12

My one star is for the annotations in The Annotated Lolita. Do yourself a favor and buy a different edition. Mr Appel is a fan boy of the worst sort. His annotations are frequently long, off topic and silly. He assumes you have read Lolita two or three times already and contently spools the story by discussing what is about to happen. I soon stopped reading the annotations, except for the French translations.

Lolita is a well written novel and I do recommend reading it, just not this edition.

Annotations Not Within Text.......2006-12-02

In the Annotated Lolita the annotations are treated like endnotes...they are given a number at the margin and then you can reference them in the back of the book. This will disappoint any reader who likes the annotations interspersed while they read.

Important Note about the Annotated Version.......2006-11-21

Greg Hullender's review (which is a Spotlight Review as I type) is dead on, especially insofar as he points out that all but the most erudite reader will miss out on most of what is going on beneath the surface of the page without reading the annotations. But...

It should be emphasized that, if you read the annotations during your first time through the book, you will completely and totally spoil the story. Put otherwise, the outcome of the whole book is given away in the first few annotations, and repeated many times thereafter. Unless you're the kind of person who reads the last page of a book first, don't read the annotations the first time through.

Also, I think it is helpful to know that Nabokov was no fan of symbolism or allegories... so don't waste time and energy looking for them in Lolita, because the author himself said that they're not there.

Average customer rating:

Controversial, haunting and somehow strangely compelling
Lolita, Overrated?
Still stirs the imigination after all these years.
"Lolita, light of my life...."
One of the 20th centuries finest literary expeditions...

Lolita (Everyman's Library Classics)
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 185715133X

Customer Reviews:

Controversial, haunting and somehow strangely compelling.......2007-07-18

Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle aged English gent who boards at a home in New England with a widow and her 12 year old daughter Dolores. Humbert is no ordinary middle aged man - for he has a fixation with young girls that he calls "nymphets" or "nymphs" - young girls of a certain disposition who reveal themselves to "bewitched travellers" such as himself. Humbert marries the widow and he quickly plots to murder her so that he can have young Dolores all to himself - unfortunately he doesn't have it in him to carry things through. However, after a rather bizarre accident, his wife dies and Humbert takes Dolores/Dolly/Lolita/Lo on a roadtrip and begins a sexual relationship with her.

There are no explicit obscenities. There is no bad language. There is no voyeuristic porn. Yet this is undoubtedly a story told by a manipulative sexual predator about the cruel exploitation of his 12 year old stepdaughter. To complicate things, Lolita is (at least some of the time) a willing participant. Humbert narrates his story with some of the most beautiful language you are ever likely to come across ("you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style") - but there is no getting away from the fact that Humbert rapes his young stepdaughter time and time again. The fact that he luxuriates in his own depravity while simultaneously acknowledging his own moral failures serves to make his character all the more complicated.

A 20th century classic that I have only now gotten around to reading. Controversial, haunting and somehow strangely compelling. Highly recommended.

Lolita, Overrated?.......2007-05-16

Lolita was one of those books in which I looked forward to reading for a long time. However, much to my regret I was disappointed.

The author is obviously highly talented and his word play is often nothing short of gorgeous. The narrative is at first, highly amusing and interesting and even touching at certain points.
In fact, I was quite enchanted by the first chapter in which Humbert describes his relationship with Anabelle. Also, the early passages of Lolita herself are quite wonderful. The problems arise when Humbert finally gets what he has always dreamed about.

The error lies in the fact that the book seems to be nothing but descriptions, and I often found myself drifting away and having to search for an actual action to have occured. Rather then putting in as much word play as possible, actual structure would allow the reader to appreciate what is described. And fascinating as it read an outsider's view of America on the road, when it goes on for several pages it becomes very tired.
The main character himself begins to become a one trick pony and I became bored with his endless rambling and self pity. Mind you I do not expect to fall in love with a molestor but I can only handle so much of his whining.

All in all, in excerpts of any part of Lolita is gorgeous. However when it is all meshed together it becomes tiresome and a chore.

Still stirs the imigination after all these years........2007-04-25

Maybe Lolita should come in a plain brown jacket given how much controversy this novel has generated over the years. Yet, it remains at the top of most critics' lists of the best books of the 20th century because the story remains as fresh as ever. While most people choose to remember little Lo, it is through the twisted mind of Humbert Humbert that we got to know this mischievous nymphet who repeatedly roused the lustful protagonist to the point of ecstasy only to foil him at almost every turn. There are countless interpretations of this novel, and Nabokov chose to remain coy about his subject matter, providing a third person foreward and a short afterward. One can gain more insight reading the Annotated Lolita by Alfred Appel, but why spoil the fun! Indulge in these carnal delights as Nabokov takes the reader on a wild ride across America, not once but twice, as Humbert revels in his lust for Lolita. However, the real thrill comes from Nabokov's rich language, the clever plot twists, and the way he cunningly pries into our subconscious, making us all complicit in Humbert's crimes of passion.

"Lolita, light of my life....".......2007-04-16

Eccentric. Passionate. Ultimately tragic. If books were men, "Lolita" would be my soulmate. As previous reviewers have so eloquently conveyed, Vladamir Nabokov was a ridiculously talented writer who so beautifully and seamlessly spun a tale of love and obsession. Oh, the obsession. It's the heart of the story. It's twisted and horrible, the things Humbert Humbert does, but you're drawn into his story the way you are to a train wreck. Ahh, just read it. You can't go wrong with it. Even if you don't have much stomach for pervy older men lusting after nymphets, read it for the prose. No one can write about mad-driven by obsession like Nabokov.

One of the 20th centuries finest literary expeditions..........2007-02-15

Introducing Humbert Humbert or H.H. - one of the strangest characters in all of literature.. A man obsessed.. and blinded by love..
Nabokov's prose just drips with tantalising beauty.. he captures the psychology of a man so well.. as to leave us feeling like we have just totally inhabited someone's mind.. It is disturbing, sure, but also thought provoking and thouroughly engrossing..
Strangely this is not a book about child abuse or a tale of morality.. It is the story of love and what it does to the brain... How we are so overtaken by our emotions as to blind us to everything else... This is truly an achievement few authors have made.. Only the likes of James Joyce could probe so deeply into the subconcious of such a character.. A work of genius..

Average customer rating:

A pleasure for the Ears
Deliciously Naughty
Yes, 5 stars but I COULD NOT FINISH
a total mindfu- ...mind altering.
absolutely amazing

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: RH Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0739322060
Release Date: 2005-04-26

Book Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

With an Introduction by Martin Amis

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

A pleasure for the Ears.......2007-09-03

Jeremy Irons is the perfect choice to read this Audiobook of the "infamous" Lolita. Iron's reading is a perfect pairing with Nabokov's writing, the richness of the language comes through even though you are not settled into your easy chair by a crackling fire with a decent vintage opened at your side.

It is pairings such as this that gives one hope that more Audio books will be prepared with equal care, unabridged, and enriching the listener's experience.

Deliciously Naughty.......2007-09-02

"LOLITA---LIGHT OF MY LIFE- FIRE OF MY LOINS---MY SIN, MY SOUL.
LOOO---LEEE---TAAA.
The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps.
LOOO--LEEE--TAAA" -Hubert Hubert-

Humbert Humbert is an intellectual, a teacher, fluidly articulate, a lover of books, a poet, and good looking. One could say he has it all. But there's one little problem, Hubert Hubert happens to be a pedaphile.

Nabokov is so brilliant, the reader will empathize with Hubert Hubert in some strange way, because he
will make them...justifying why Hubert Hubert does the things he does. And the reader will try to justify his perversion, too.

Hubert Hubert is a child molester, a monster, a pervert, a stalker, evil, and sick. And he is appalled, even by himself. This is the reason Nabokov has named him Hubert Hubert (One is good-one is evil).

"IF ONLY SHE SAW THE MONSTERS BEHIND THE EYES,
I AM THE DEVIL'S PLAY THING" Hubert Hubert

Hubert Hubert is obsessed with young girls (Nymphets) as he so elequently calls them. He is sexually attracted to Lolita most of all, and married her mother to get close to her. (Naughty boy).

His thoughts are written so beautifully and deliciously the way he feels for Lolita, that the reader neglects, at times, to see his perversion and sins. Hubert Hubert describes Lolita's knees, her legs, her skin, her hair, how it
drapes over her apple fresh cheeks. How lovely. How pretty. How wicked.

Hubert Hubert descibes Lolita's mother (his wife)like this: "Being with her was like thrashing inside a decaying forest"

Shame on you, Hubert. She's only 35 years old! You dirty, dirty old man.

Hubert Hubert speaks in third person through several parts of the book...because Hubert Hubert cannot even bear himself--for he is a demoralizing, warped, sick individual. And the reader will still fill empathy for him

"I am the Devil's Plaything. I am a Monster."

Hubert Hubert trys desperately to become the doting step-father, giving Lolita what she wants, getting involved in school activites, protecting her from the big bad world.

But he forgets one thing....

Hubert Hubert does not protect her from Hubert Hubert.

Vladimir Nabokov is a genius, and Lolita has so many levels of beauty, metaphor, and lushness, one cannot find any inmperfection within it.

Lolita will horrify the reader and delight the reader at the same time. How the heck to Nabokov do that?

Nobody could have read this book as Irons did--the sexuality rolls of his tongue like a kind of poison.

***Not too many books can compare to this Lolita. A true, unbelievable classic.

Yes, 5 stars but I COULD NOT FINISH.......2007-07-13

I had read Lolita many years ago in my college student garret and was entertained, a bit appalled, thought I was able to "get" HH, but mainly I was amazed by the language. I can remember rereading sentences just to feel the commas. BUT, hearing it read by Jeremy Irons is a whole different thing. He is an absolutely amazing actor. It is CREEPY and the incredible language becomes his own completely, rather than feeling in any way, like Nabokov's intellectual exercise. Just describing Iron's speech, his sibillant esses, makes me shudder. I had to stop around CD 5 (near Salina, Kansas, as I drove from SF to the East Coast with Tyler the dog) because the person and the story were now so sordid and disturbing.
Then, staying with my cousin in Bethesda, I was in a room with the usual suspect college student books (Camus, Pynchon, Vonnegut, a used copy of Introduction to the Principles of Earwax) and sure enough, there was Lolita. It was ~benign and fascinating once again, until I pushed myself to imagine Iron's voice. Then I put it back on the shelf and washed my hands.

a total mindfu- ...mind altering........2007-06-20

the scariest thing about this book is that you don't see it coming. you pick up the book thinking you're going to be repulsed by the whole thing. it's pedophilia! but instead you find yourself nodding along, agreeing, sympathizing with humbert's totally horrible viewpoints. you find yourself wanting to be more like lolita so someone will love you like that. you find yourself laughing when the narrator wants you to laugh, feeling sorry for him when dolores finally escapes. it's utterly convincing to anyone who's ever been obsessed with anything... like diving into another world.

it's incredibly well written, but i don't think i would recommend this book to anyone. i think instead that it's the first book i've read that should carry a warning label. "listening to this book will seduce you."

absolutely amazing.......2006-12-16

Nabokov's story of HH and his obsession with little Lolita is one of the most amazing books of all time. The audio version read by Jeremy Irons is absolutely the best audio book I've ever heard. Jeremy Irons played the role of HH in one of the movie adaptations of the book, and he reads this first-person narrative fully in character. I cannot think of another actor who could have captured the essence of this book the way Irons did. I purchased the audio version to listen to on my iPod on a trip, and I kept listening to him read the story even when I was taking breaks from the road. Just as it is hard to put the book down, it is hard to stop listening to this audio book. Once you get past the introduction to the book (I didn't catch the name of who read that; it was a different voice, unless Irons was just doing a character), you won't be able to stop.

$You Only Get Better: The Perfect Life\Three For The Road\This Time Around$
Average customer rating:

"Like Fine Wine, You Get Better With Age"
For these women life begins after forty and it couldn't be sweeter!
You Mellow With Time
Like fine wine...
Wonderful "mature" women characters who find love, peace and hope

You Only Get Better: The Perfect Life\Three For The Road\This Time Around
Connie Briscoe , Lolita Files , and Anita Bunkley
Manufacturer: Harlequin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0373830599

Customer Reviews:

"Like Fine Wine, You Get Better With Age".......2007-07-14

Connie Briscoe's "The Perfect Life"- True what Tonya and Aaron did to Maxine was low down, but Maxine after 20 something years you're still holding a grudge against them. I say they did you a favor, you've got your husband and kids, move on girlfriend, move on. Lolita Files' "Three For The Road"- Adam took the cowardly way out to end his marriage to Lilibelle, but she found someone better in Chance Landry. The part of the story where she and Chance are having dinner and after a few drinks start singing songs from the Flintstones was so funny to me. Anita Bunkley's "This Time Around"- Danika you go girl for working your way to the top of that male dominated company, with your makeover now you're fierce. Why did you take Raymond back? He may do what he did to you again. I enjoyed this anthology.

For these women life begins after forty and it couldn't be sweeter!.......2007-05-16

4.5 rating

THE PERFECT LIFE by Connie Briscoe
Maxine Davis has had it with her boring marriage and smart mouth teenagers. Even the neighborhood they live in is dull. Maxine misses the early days of their marriage - when they went out of their ways to please each other.

A phone call from her mother brings the shocking news of her aunt's death and brings her face to face with her cousin and best friend Tonya. They haven't spoken to each other in twenty years - not since Tonya stole Maxine's fiancé Aaron. What will it take for Maxine to see that she has THE PERFECT LIFE with Curtis?

Connie Briscoe brings to mind just how easy it is to take the people in your life for granted. Maxine's anger and resentment that she's allowed to fester over the years has blinded her to how truly blessed she is with her simple family.

THREE FOR THE ROAD by Lolita Files
Lillibelle Goldman's world is forever changed by the events of 9/11. Not because she lost a loved one, but because that's the day her husband chose to tell her that he's found someone else and wants out of their twenty-five year marriage.

Newly divorced and with the kids away at college, Lilli decides to do something she's only dreamed of - visit Las Vegas. She packs up her car and heads out only to have it stall out on the side of the road during a rain and hail storm. It's there that she meets Chance and his dog, Yancy, and together they opt to share the adventure. Neither of them is looking for romance, but can they resist the desire that soon broils between them?

Lolita Files will have readers smiling with this charmingly poignant tale. While it's sad to read about the demise of Lilli's longtime marriage, I had to admire her for having the guts to take a trip on her own rather than bemoan what could have been.

THIS TIME AROUND by Anita Bunkley
Anika Redmond has spent many years trying to work her way to the top of a male dominated company where she's been employed for the past twenty-two years. She came to work for Cranstar after the collapse of her marriage and put any hopes she may have had for marriage firmly out of her mind.

With a little encouragement from her friend and neighbor, Ming, Anika submits an entry into a competition. The prize? A complete makeover from a popular television program called `A New You.' She's stunned when she receives the phone call that she has been selected as one of the winners of the make over. Will it help her get the job of her dreams? Of course not. What it will do is bolster her sagging spirits and make her feel like a whole new woman with a promising future ahead of her and maybe she'll discover that she does indeed have a happy ending lurking just around the next corner.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this story. When I first read that Anika was going to undergo an extreme makeover I was stunned. Then as I read further into the story I realized that the make over didn't change who she is or her position in the company. It does bring a new and exciting aspect to how she feels about herself and how coworkers and associates view her.

Connie Briscoe, Lolita Files and Anita Bunkley bring a new outlook on life to women over forty with these three uplifting tales. These stories transcend racial barriers and make age seem like nothing more than a number. Each of these stories is very different in theme and tone but they all drive home the fact that women of all ages are beautiful and YOU ONLY GET BETTER as the years go by. For most women age is a sensitive issue, but these three authors tackle it extremely well and present women who readers could almost envy because of their spirit and determination to be themselves.

Chrissy Dionne (courtesy of Romance Junkies)

You Mellow With Time.......2007-05-04

Maxine is a wife and mother, who at the age of 45 just feels as if she is unfulfilled, or maybe she's just not getting any attention. However, readers will learn that her unhappiness stems from something lurking from her past. Maxine never had the opportunity to close something that happened 20 years prior. When her aunt passes, she must travel to the funeral, and she's now face-to-face with those demons that she's suffered with in silence. Is there forgiveness in her future?

Three For the Road: Lolita Files

Spoiled since she was a child, Lilibelle has even managed to be spoiled in her adult life as well. Married to a rich and successful doctor for twenty five years, Lilibelle devotes her life to her family. Of all days to learn that life as you know it is changing without your knowledge, it's 9/11, an already painful day, yet Lilibelle learns that her husband is leaving her and wants a divorce. Devastated, Lilibelle does not know what to do. She's never had to be on her own. Is she capable of making her own decisions?

This Time Around: Anita Bunkley

Danika is a divorcee that has worked hard to climb the corporate ladder. Not really missing much as far as the social life goes, she's devoted all of her time to work. Her neighbor tells her about a contest that she feels will enhance Danika's life. Amazingly Danika is the winner of the contest, and believe it or not, it did really enhance her life and great things begin to happen with people taking notice. Danika is given an assignment in the scorching hot West Texas. Unfortunately, the scenery provides very little; however, a familiar face will be there. Is there still a little heat in the oven?

Just like fine wine,"You Only Get Better" with time. An overall decent read by great women, but times it was somewhat of a slow read.

Reviewed by: Carmen
3.5 stars

Like fine wine..........2007-03-21

For that time between hot flashes and social security when women are in emotional limbo, YOU ONLY GET BETTER, an anthology, by three bestselling authors is on point.

'The Perfect Life' by Connie Briscoe
Maxine has hated her cousin Tonya, who was her best friend, for 25 years. Weeks before graduating from college Tonya stole her fiancé and they have not spoken since. Sadly, Maxine has allowed the past to interfere with her outlook on her life with her husband. Still wallowing in self-pity, the death of Tonya's mother gives her a chance to revisit the past. Maxine attends the funeral, confronts her cousin, and Tonya apologizes. Can Maxine forgive her and embrace the good life she is now living or will she continue to short change herself?

'Three for the Road' by Lolita Files
As the horrific events of 9/11 is changing how America lives, Lilibelle's husband, of over 25 years, uses this time to invoke his own disaster. In Arizona at a convention, he tells her he is never coming home; he loves someone else. Always indulged by her parents, and then by her husband, Lili is devastated. She's alone for the first time in her life, but surprisingly she does not wilt, instead she metamorphoses. She heads for Las Vegas, meets a newly divorced man traveling with his dog and finds her footing. This chance meeting may be just the catalyst she needs to jumpstart her life.

'This Time Around' by Anita Bunkley
Danika has been divorced from her domineering husband for 25 years; he left because she was "too independent". She has since worked her way up in a male-dominated company. As soon as she is promoted, she has to take a newly acquired company and cut the staff by half. Is this a golden opportunity? The company is run by her controlling ex-husband, now widowed with two teenagers. Danika is the last person he wants to see especially under the current circumstances. With a complete physical makeover Danika exudes a jaunty confidence, but is she prepared to see her 'ex' and can she handle her first assignment without reviving the ghosts from their pasts?

YOU ONLY GET BETTER is for women of all ages, but it may be special for those who have reached 'that' plateau. The three novellas are sassy, uplifting and real.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Wonderful "mature" women characters who find love, peace and hope.......2007-03-07

This is "chick lit" about the older crowd--if you call late 40s-early 50s the older crowd.

Three bestselling authors tell three separate stories about women nearing 50 and in life-changing situations.

The Perfect Life -- Connie Briscoe (New York Times)

Teacher Maxine Davis has hated her childhood best friend (and cousin) because 25 years ago Tonya stole her fiancÇe. Hateful and unforgiving, the death of Tonya's mother gives Maxine a chance to look back to that fateful time. Maxine's mother cajoles her into going to the funeral. Cousin Tonya apologizes. Can Maxine ever forgive and again be part of Tonya's life? Could you?

Three for the Road -- Lolita Files (Essence and Blackboard)

New Yorker Lilibelle's shocking divorced comes on 9-1-1 when she locates her doctor husband in Arizona at a convention, and demands he come home because she is terrified. On that fateful day, he tells her he is never coming home; he loves someone else. Lili had always been indulged by her parents, and then by him. She is now alone in her empty nest. Travel with her across the country (sort of alone) on her trip to discovery, and a chance meeting with a newly divorced man. Can Lili let go of her need for control--and find love?

This Time Around -- Anita Bunkley (Blackboard)

Danika Redmond's single life came after her divorce--he couldn't handle her independence. Everyone he ever loved abandoned him--so he decided to leave her before she left him. She has worked her way up in a male-dominated corporation. When she is promoted, her first assignment is to go to a newly acquired company and cut the staff by half--run by her controlling ex-husband, now widowed with two teenager. He doesn't handle the fact that she is now "his boss" and could fire him. Will she be successful with this first important assignment? Will they get back together?

Minimally important to the story is the fact that the authors and the women in their stories are all African-Americans. I agree, "These fascinating women discover that life, love and everything else gets better with age!"

Armchair Interviews says: The read was fun and done quickly--in order to find out how each one handled that new life.

Average customer rating:

A beach idyll
Anita Shreve is a five star novelist!
Love Anita Shreve, very disappointed though.
just like the Harlequin romances
Certainly not her best!

Body Surfing: A Novel
Anita Shreve
Manufacturer: Hachette Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 1594838747
Release Date: 2007-04-24

Amazon.com

The beach house in New Hampshire which figured in Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife, Fortune's Rocks, and Sea Glass is once again featured in Body Surfing. This time, it is the summer home of the Edwards family, Anna and Mark and daughter Julie. Mrs. Edwards has great hopes for Julie, who is "slow," so she hires Sydney to tutor her, in preparation for her senior year. There are two older brothers, Jeff and Ben, whose arrival changes the household dynamic considerably.

Once again, Shreve revisits the minefield of love and betrayal that she has explored so well in her best novels. Sydney is 29, twice married, once divorced, and once a widow. She is floundering, not sure she wants to go back to school, accepting whatever job comes along and then moving on. She answers the ad for a tutor and finds herself in the Edwards household, where she discovers that Julie has undiscovered artistic talent. Mrs. Edwards dislikes her instantly, is dismissive, and treats her like a servant. Mr. Edwards befriends her, shows her his roses and talks to her about the history of the house, giving the reader a rundown of the role the house has played in prior novels.

Sydney, Jeff, and Ben go body surfing late one night and Sydney is sure that Ben has tried to grope her underwater. She takes immediate umbrage at this and treats him coldly thereafter. Shreve's other work has a steady narrative flow, but this novel is episodic and disjointed. There is the the arrival of Jeff's girlfriend, her departure, an evening when Julie comes home drunk and won't talk about it, and a liaison between Sydney and Jeff which leads to the complications that eventually define the novel. There is a twist at the end, involving the brothers, that is divisive, destructive and rather hard to believe.

While this is not Shreve's best effort, because the characters are not well-defined, it is worth reading her take on what happens to people when they compete for love. --Valerie Ryan

Customer Reviews:

A beach idyll.......2007-10-03

Twenty nine year old Sydney is employed by a family to tutor their backward 18 year old daughter in the hope of her gaining college admission. The girl's mother who treats Sydney as a servant, refuses to recognise that her daughter hasn't the mental ability to attend college and also is blind to the fact that the girl is stunningly beautiful and on the brink of a sexually active life. As Sydney has already been married twice, once divorced and once widowed, she is wary of the overtures made to her by the sons of the house when they come to the beach house for the summer, and takes an immediate dislike to the elder, as she is convinced that he groped her in the water while they were all swimming. She soon begins an intense love affair with the younger son which leads to very high drama and a complete change of life for her. It was a quick, pleasant read, written with Anita Shreve's usual style and one which her fans will enjoy immensely.

Anita Shreve is a five star novelist!.......2007-09-11

Once again Anita Shreve brings you into the novel. Her writing is excellent. I always am anxiously awaiting the next novel....not soon enough for me. The characters in her novels become your friends or part of your family. What a gift Anita Shreve possesses.

Love Anita Shreve, very disappointed though........2007-09-11

I have read every single one of Anita Shreve's books. I am a huge fan & was so happy when I heard she had a new book coming out. I was so disappointed, however. This had the potential to be great, but it flopped. The characters were not developed, the main character did not grow in any way throughout the book, and I felt the end was not the end. I felt that she just gave up at the end & wasn't sure where to take it, so didn't try. I kept expecting something horrific like someone dying as in the rest of her books.

All in all, she is still my favorite author, but I am so sad that this book didn't measure up to her other amazing work.

just like the Harlequin romances.......2007-08-30

Anita Shreve has been turning out some readable but not great books in the last few years, and this is one of those. A young woman working as a tutor for a "slow" (the characters all say she is `slow' instead of perhaps choosing a word more politically correct, which is odd) teenaged girl in coastal Maine for the summer becomes entangled in the family. She falls for one son, while the other brother turns her off. Anyway, she is in love with the wrong brother, but we know that, and when he is revealed to be a cad, no big surprise. There is also a subplot involving the "slow" teen, which is ludicrous in its attempt to be socially relevant.

Certainly not her best!.......2007-08-27

I like Anita Shreve's books, such as Fortune Rocks and Pilot's Wife. This was so poorly written that I could not believe it was the same author. I detested the main character - hello, you are 29, married twice, no job, couldn't finish graduate school, doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, but is happy to marry whatever guy she latches on to???? She was a whiny, repulsive character. No wonder why the mother disliked her in the story. The characters in this are so poorly developed...I was actually hoping that a hurricane would hit this beach house and drown everyone! Blah!!

Nabokov: Novels 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire (Library of America)

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The best of Nabokov
Nabokov a hard act to follow for other serious writers
Nabokov's Best

Nabokov: Novels 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire (Library of America)
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1883011191

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The second in Library of America's three-volume collection of Vladimir Nabokov's novels, Novels 1955-1962 contains his most acclaimed and popular works. The short, often anthologized Pnin is included, as is Pale Fire, Nabokov's most elaborate fictional joke: it's a novel masquerading as a 999-line poem accompanied by a professorial pedant's extensive annotations. But this deluxe volume is most valuable for its inclusion of Lolita alongside the screenplay that Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's film is quite different from the version Nabokov intended, and Novels 1955-1962 offers the opportunity to compare Lolita's two Nabokovian incarnations with Kubrick's film and with the recent, very controversial movie directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Jeremy Irons.

Customer Reviews:

The best of Nabokov.......2004-03-29

Three classic novels and a solid screenplay adaptation -- Vladimir Nabokov's literary genius is perhaps best shown in the second volume of Library of America's collections. The classic "Lolita" is paired with its own screenplay adaptation, and the comic "Pnin" and witty "Pale Fire."

"Lolita" is the tale for which Nabokov is best known. The redundantly-named, middle-aged (dirty old man) Humbert Humbert is haunted by some teenage love he had long ago, and which he thinks he has refound in the prepubescent Delores Haze (called "Lolita" by Humbert). He sets out to seduce the unsuspecting girl, but her mom is standing in the way...

"Pnin" is a gently comic tale about Timofey Pnin, a timid, moderately neurotic Russian professor who now lives in the United States. He's amazed by technology, fussy, a bit weird about his health, and has problems with American train schedules. The unfortunate Pnin stumbles from one problem to another, trying to keep everything under control in uncontrollable circumstances.

"Pale Fire" is perhaps the best literary satire out there. Poet John Shade wrote the sprawling 999-line poem "Pale Fire," shortly before being murdered. After his death, the poem is being painstakingly dissected and annotated by his neighbor, Charles Kinbote. Except Kinbote is a nutjob, who interprets "Pale Fire" as being all about him, and will come up with weird symbolism to justify his belief.

"Lolita: A Screenplay" is almost a different version of "Lolita." Here Nabokov recounted the same events of the novel, but from an ominiscent perspective -- that of the person who would be watching the movie. Very rich, very well-adapted, very evocative for a screenplay, this is almost as good as a book in itself.

Nabokov could handle just about any kind of writing, this collection shows us. From the opulent poetry of "Pale Fire" to the solid screenplay, from the erotic drama of "Lolita" to the chuckling comedy of "Pnin," he handles it all. His writing is detailed and lush, rich almost to the point of choking. He shifts perspectives, tells a story through annotation, sees through the eyes of a pedophile, and does it all with a certain winking flair.

Nabokov's writing is a combination of believable characterizations and rich language. Humbert Humbert, for example, is a horrendously believable person, especially since he makes constant excuses for his pedaphilic behavior -- the characterization is so good, in fact, that newcomers might even think (incorrectly) that Nabokov sympathized with the creep. At the same time, he creates the rather pitiful, absentminded Pnin, the self-serving nutcase Kinbote -- and they're all delightfully three-dimensional. You could bump into people like these on the bus at any time, and they would be just as he describes them.

Comedy, drama, satire and screenwriting are collected in the second Library of America collection of Nabokov's novels. Sexy, funny, brilliant and exquisitely written, these are among the best of Vladimir Nabokov's works.

Nabokov a hard act to follow for other serious writers.......2000-08-31

Picture Vladimir Nabokov. In the hall of mirrors that is popular culture, he is the dirty man who wrote the dirty book "Lolita," about a 12-year-old "nymphet" -- he invented the term, by the way -- and her affair with an older man.

Angle the mirror another way, and he is one of the founders of the modernist novel, which to some people -- myself included -- that's a damning phrase. "Modernist" and "post-modernist" literature seems a) self-referencing to the point of egotism; b) dedicated to the advancement of decedent themes, and to score big points as a writer, pile it on, brother; and c) obsessed with the discovery that the "arts" -- whether books, pictures or movies -- are artificial, and that we use them to create, well, books, pictures and movies.

Unless you think I am making it up, here's an example drawn from real life: a few years back, a Charlotte museum mounted an exhibition of a painter's work, one of which was a canvas whose front side was turned toward the wall, exposing a paint-stained frame. A newspaper reviewer breathlessly informed the reading public that the artist did this "to inform the viewer that most paintings are recetangular."

Now, a reasonably intelligent person could probably reach that conclusion without much effort, but discoveries like these seem to drive those who tread into the "modern" era of art.

So Vlaidmir Nabokov's reputation is caught between two very opposing poles. He either panders to the worst tastes of man, or the worst tastes of art.

Fortunately, he is neither, and the Library of America agrees. The non-profit publisher throws its reputation behind Nabokov as a writer worth reading by publishing all of his English-language novels in three volumes. The first volume covers his work from 1941 to 1951: "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," "Bend Sinister," and his memoir, "Speak, Memory." The middle work contains the notorious "Lolita," "Pale Fire," "Pnin," and the "Lolita" screenplay Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. The concluding volume contains "Ada," "Transparent Things," and "Look at the Harlequins!"

But of these works, only "Lolita" stands alone. It is not a dirty book, and one should pity those American and British tourists who, in the mid-1950s, bought the pale olive-green two-volume paperbacks published in Paris by the notorious Olympia Press. Those expecting frankly pornographic stories like "The Story of O" and "How to Do It" would have been sorely disappointed in Humbert Humbert's self-confessed defense of his rape (not "seduction," which implies a willingness to be seduced) and exploitation of Delores Haze, "Lolita, light of my life,fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Even Olympia's publisher was taken in, telling a mutual friend that he though Nabokov was Humbert, and that he was attempting to popularize nymphet love.

What does become apparent after reading through the volumes (and aided by an excellent two-volume biography by Brian Boyd) is that there is much more to Nabokov than meets the eye. Delving deeper in his works reveals a funhouse hall of mirrors that can lead to a definitive end, and there's not much in modernist fiction that could substantiate that claim.

What sets Nabokov off from other writers is his use of the language. Raised in Tsarist Russia, Nabokov was a child prodigy who was taught Russian, French and English at an early age. His prose is elegent, his command of English astounding. It's close to the prose of Henry James, but except for the foreign phrases, which the Library editions provide translations and explanations, far more understandable.

Descriptions pulled at random from "Lolita" ring as if English was a newly minted language, capable of expressing humor ("The bed was a frightful mess with overtones of potato chips") and snobbish anger ("Lo had grabbed some comics from the back seat and, mobile white-bloused, one brown elbow out of the window, was deep in the current adventure of some clout or clown").

Even, when Humbert meets his Lolita long after she escaped his clutches, when he believes that he still loves her, heart-rending: "In her washed-out grey eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romance was for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party, like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like a humdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood."

This is not casual reading, but neither is it reading-as-masochistic exercise, with furrowed brows and an exasperated flipping of once-read pages. There is a surface meaning that is easily accessible, but there are deeper meanings, in-jokes, ironies and moral questions worthy of consideration.

The best volume of the three is the second, which contains "Lolita," the screenplay he wrote for Stanley Kubrick (which was not used), the comic novel (for Nabokov at least) "Pnin" and "Pale Fire."

But good works can be found in the other volumes as well. "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," in the first volume, is the author's account of his biographical research on his half-brother, the brilliant writer Sebastian Knight, who had died recently of a heart condition after writing a half-dozen novels. It bears all the hallmarks of the post-modernist novel replete with a self-absorption with writers, spurious biography, an unreliable narrator and ironical references. "Speak, Memory," also in the first volume, is Nabokov's memoirs about growing up in Russia.

Indeed, the only disadvantage to reading Nabokov is that it may cause a nagging niggling in the back of your head, while reading novels in the future, that they just cannot compare to those composed by the American from Russia.

Nabokov's Best.......1998-08-05

This is a compact, sturdy and high quality edition of the first novels Nabokov wrote entirely in English. It's the central volume in a three-volume set of Nabokov's autobiography and English fiction (excluding the short stories), including his finest achievements -- Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire. The two versions of Lolita (as novel and screen adaptation) are illuminating to read together: the novel is created within Humbert's subjective and self-serving memory, while in the screenplay Nabokov reimagines the story as objective action. I was also intrigued to find that some obvious departures from the novel in Kubrick's film -- such as the opening scene of Humbert shooting Quilty, or the high school prom scene -- are ideas taken from the Nabokov screenplay (in turn fragments of the novel excised in the final version). Brian Boyd offers an impeccable text, much improved over the paperback editions, with a chronology of the author's life. This is the volume to choose if you u! nravel Nabokov's narrative patterns with your own marginal notes and comments, and want a volume that won't disintegrate in a nymphet's span of years.

Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks)

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an absolutely phenomenal view of the mosaic that is iran
Eye opening humanizing text. Not just for those with a literary background.
Insight book for re-understanding the Middle East
Unconvincing
Well Worth Reading--This Opened my Eyes!

Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks)
Fatemeh Keshavarz
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0807831093

Book Description

In a direct, frank, and intimate exploration of Iranian literature and society, scholar, teacher, and poet Fatemeh Keshavarz challenges popular perceptions of Iran as a society bereft of vitality and joy. Her fresh perspective on present day Iran provides a rare insight into this rich but virtually unknown culture alive with artistic expression.

Customer Reviews:

an absolutely phenomenal view of the mosaic that is iran.......2007-09-26

I absolutely would recommend this book to anyone who is from Iran, thinks they understand Iran, or wants to understand that complex nation.

This book is by far the most balanced, honest, and unvarnished assessment of the complexities that escape so many analysts and authors who attempt to write about that country.

It also disassembles the perturbing pattern of modern day 'neo-orientalism' that is exemplified by Azar Nafisi's unfortunately best-selling "Reading Lolita in Tehran".

I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Eye opening humanizing text. Not just for those with a literary background........2007-09-10

I just finished "Jasmine and Stars". I have recommended it to many of my friends and relatives. Keshavarz weaves anecdotes from her own life with excerpts and summaries from Persian literature. It is simply a fascinating and humanizing text especially if you are not familiar with Persian literature. It is a great introduction. After finishing it, I went back and wrote down the names of the text and authors Keshavarz cites. I am excited about reading these works in the future thanks to this text.

Insight book for re-understanding the Middle East.......2007-08-14

Jasmine and Stars is a compelling novel, warmly presented through the very personal narrative of Fatemeh Keshavarz, who explores the different voices of Iran, including two modern Iranian women writers and people of many statures. It does so in response to novels whose narratives present a paradigm of the world by which the existence of such people is improbable.

"What does the elephant look like?" poses Keshavarz. Jasmine and Stars begins by recounting the ancient Persian fable about villagers encountering an elephant for the first time and in the dark. One feels its trunk, the other its legs, and the other its ears. Later, when asked wha